This month, the band released a new single with animated music video entitled “Le Nafsy“ which I am going to review now.
Actually, I want initiate my review with my full appreciation and respect for Ta7t El Sefr vocalist Dina Bahgat, as she manages to employ her angelic, spiritual vocal technique into music.

The music starts with spiritual guitar with ambient touches that catch the ears, then in 1:32, the music turns to be so powerful, impressive to express the conflict.
As the successive photos reflect that the main idea of the music is people who fight their inner world, external universe seeking self-expression, and Art for Art sake.

What attracts me to the track more is the part starting from 2:15, silence and some angelic quite voice of Bahgat, followed by electronic, atmospheric sounds within the emotional, catchy tunes of guitars and keys.

Actually, the music is very touching, and spiritual, in addition the music video is also expressive and well-made.
The video is highly-recommended guys, listen to it, and support your local scene, and the rate is 8.5 out of 10, because actually I think the vocals needed to be more clear, I couldn’t catch the whole lyrics, although it’s written in Arabic.

It’s the first single released with the vocals of Hakeem Kamal and it’s actually promising, the vocals change added to the band’s style and genre. The vocals made it more flexible and could blaze a trail for the band’s elements to smoothly jump from genre to genre however in different tracks or within the same track.

The track is not very close to a progressive rock track, it may sound progressive rock at the beginning but as soon as the keyboards play its tunes, it shifts the genre away from progressive rock but it’s no sooner and the track is a progressive rock track once again and keeps shifting till the end of the track; I think it’s very cool actually for the band as it is very interesting to play several types of tunes in the same track, only creative ones do that. Moreover it was a bit risky but I liked it much actually.

Lyric-wise; the band needs to improve their writing, their lyrics aren’t so powerful, as the first verse says “Ma tegy nmshy, nmshy b3ed w nbd2 tany mn gded w ad7k mn alby w ab2a sa3ed, ma tegy nmshy..2alo 3lya walad 3aned 7wlya nas laken wa7ed” which translates into “Let’s walk, walk far away and start all over again so I can laugh so hard and be happy, Let’s walk! They said I’m a stubborn kid, surrounded by people yet lonely” The lyrics are amateur as if the lyricist improvised and immediately wrote what he has improvised and didn’t go through thinking about what he wrote and thought if the lines matched or not! They cared about the rhyming not the meanings and chose weak and corny idioms, which made it, sound very corny at the beginning. However, they enhanced their lyrics’ level in the second verse and it was so much better than the first one.

This track needed a solo, an inspirational solo would’ve been better for the track. But I think they released this single which lacks solos to excite their listeners about what the album they are about to release may sound like..

If my assumption are true, then they could excite me.

I guess we all will wait for their releases in the few next weeks.

Edited by: Bishoy Nader

Let me introduce you to the members of Ta7t ElSefr:

Tarek El Sherbiny (Tiko): Vocals
Mark Samer: Keyboards & Piano
Mohamed Ayman (Taher): Lead Guitars
Ahmed Weaam: Bass Guitars
Mario Samer: Drums
Muhamed Sami: Violinist
Kamal Nessim: Percussion

Though it’s the band’s first release they’ve decided to make a music video, while most of the bands hold the music video process until it feels like the right time. But when I asked their reason their reply was:
“This whole video thing was a very happy coincidence. There was a project applied arts students, at the university I attend, to do a video for an underground band, and one of the most brilliant art students which is Reem Ossama listened to our song and she liked it. She then contacted us to do a video. As you mentioned, this is not a usual thing to do with beginners, so we thought it is a perfect opportunity to seize that chance, as it will definitely help us get the song out there as much as possible. We have had meetings with her to conceptualize the storyline and the video came out later.”

I’d like to present you both the video and song. Let’s start with the song;
The intro: The song’s intro is provocative, you know how are on a desert road, wearing sunglasses and a cowboy hat, boots and the air is blowing the rag on your neck? That’s how I felt or that was my vibe then, but it was all gone until the vocalist, Tiko hit me with his out of tune voice in the first words singing “Ana, Ana Ana.” But when the vocals progressed, it was so much better than it did when he started singing.
The lyrics are nice and it matches today’s routines. It’s convenient. However, I thought it was limited. Not just because they lines were small, but were also repeated. The first 2 lines in verse 1 were as the same in verse 2, I think they could’ve wrote it better.
The solo of the song was moderate, it wasn’t as brutal but not weak too. It was kind of satisfying.
As their first song, I think we would hear more about those guys in the near future; they’ve got game so to speak!
I’d rate this song with 5.5 out of 10 ‘cause of lack of lyrics and the solo’s moderation.

Let’s now check the video…
The video – to be frank – is relatively low. First of all it doesn’t show the actual meaning of the song. Besides there were worthless scenes that maybe were set just to fill the song’s length, not to prove or show an exact situation.
By the solo the video goes to show a teenage girl dancing ballet to the rhythms of the guitar on a dusty floor with junk furniture in the background. I couldn’t relate the scene to the lyrics of the song.
The footage of the band playing was pretty cool and that’s maybe what is best about that video.

Ta7t El Sefr may be one of the bands that you look at and say “I remember those guys when they were “Below zero” but look what they’ve got now!” – See what I did there?
Frankly and after all, I can hear the sound of art and fame in their music.
Good luck for you all.

Written by: Amged Mahmoud
Edited by: NJ Bakr